Steadier Footing
by hostilecrayon
Summary: Sometimes, when you don't take your chances, those chances pass you by. Unrealized Yosuke/Yu.


Based on the song Steadier Footing by Deathcab for Cutie.

**Steadier Footing**

It's cold out; Yosuke can see his breath turn to fog in front of him, bursting out only to dissipate as quickly as it comes. It makes him think of things, memories floating across the years to find him now, sitting on his porch at nearly eleven – late enough that everyone is probably already gone, but still earlier than he'd gone to bed when he was in high school, back when staying up until midnight actually meant something.

Has it really been five years? It feels like five seconds. It feels like five lifetimes.

Seeing them all again had been strange. He's kept in touch in varying degrees with every one of them, but a few exchanged e-mails and awkward phone calls aren't really enough to keep them close. In movies, everyone falls back in together like they'd never left, like for that brief moment when they reunite, time moves to meet them, to sweep them up in everything they'd been all over again. Life is nothing like the movies. That's something Yosuke has learned the hard way.

He pulls out a pack of silly, melon ball flavored cigarettes, presses one between his lips and flicks open a scratched and dull Keroppi zippo. He takes a long drag, and the smoke lingers longer than his breath, curling up into the air in languid twists and turns. The cigarettes go back in his pocket but as he pulls his jacket tighter around him, he keeps the zippo out, the familiar weight comfortable in his hand.

His thumb brushes over the engraving, the green paint having long since chipped and flaked away until only the dull grey remains. Somehow, when Yu had left, they'd all ended up with trinkets, to remember their time together, he'd said. As if he could ever forget.

He hadn't even started smoking yet. Yosuke snorts, idly wondering if Yu had somehow predicted the future. Probably not, but it was a fun thought. A pleasant one, one where Yu knew him so well he could predict his future behaviors. Now Yu barely knows him from a hole in the ground, probably.

Only an hour later, Yosuke already wishes he'd stayed, at the same time as he knows that once Yu had left, there ceased to be a reason for him to be there. Maybe wasn't a reason for him to be there before that, but he never could say no to Yu. That's one of the few things that has never changed.

His porch is hard and cold, digging into his tailbone, but there is no one to call him in, no one to worry about him catching a cold or getting hypothermia, never really had been, so he just huddles deeper into his jacket and takes another drag, the tip glowing for a moment, illuminating nothing much of note until it dulls again.

Occasionally, some drunk staggers by, red-faced and coming down off the buzz of the night's festivities. Yosuke smiles at the night, but there's no real mirth to it. Not like the smiles he remembers giving on the banks of the Samegawa, when he had something to smile about.

"Hey."

Yosuke can't help it, he jumps, almost dropping his burnt out cigarette. Somewhere along the way, it has reached the filter, and Yosuke flicks it off the porch with no real thought to where it lands before he turns his head. "Way to give a guy a heart attack," he says, a chuckle that sounds less forced than he thought it would.

Yu answers with a chuckle of his own, ducking his head sheepishly. "Sorry."

"I figured you'd be on your way home already with how early you disappeared, man." Yosuke makes a motion with his head and Yu takes the invitation, sitting a modest distance from him so he has ample room to sprawl backwards a little, resting his palms on the cool wood behind him and leaning back, looking up into the sky.

"I needed some time to think." It doesn't sound like it's a big deal – Yu could make the apocalypse sound like it was nothing to worry about – but Yosuke knows better. At least, he hopes he does.

"Something on your mind?" Yosuke throws out there, trying for equally nonchalant and hoping Yu can't hear the slight eagerness in his tone, his wish to be the best friend one more time manifesting. He absently pulls out another smoke and Yu shoots him a sidelong glance.

"Mind if I bum one?" he asks, and Yosuke isn't sure if he's avoiding the question or just stalling.

"Dude, didn't you quit last winter?" Yosuke says, light and teasing, but he holds the pack out anyway.

"I did," he says simply, pulling one from the pack, and Yosuke considers lighting his cigarette for him, but feels awkward about it, and hands him the zippo he'd given him in another life. For a second, Yosuke thinks he'll just light it and that'll be it, but as he takes his first drag, his eyes flick down to the frog there, his fingers brushing the surface in a way that so mimics Yosuke's own just minutes ago that Yosuke visibly shivers. He thinks Yu will say something about it, and he does open his mouth, but it just hangs open for a second before closing again. Finally, he lays it flat on his palm, reaching into Yosuke's space a little to allow him to grab it, Yosuke's fingers brushing lightly against the warmth of Yu's skin before the comforting weight is back in his own hand. Yosuke hunches in on himself a little more, his fingers closing around the metal and gripping it tightly. "Cold?"

"A little. Not quite ready to go in yet, though, you know what I mean?" Yosuke has no idea if Yu knows what he means – Yosuke barely knows what he means, is in fact, sort of just talking to talk, to feel the ghost of a friendship long dulled.

Yu just quirks up his lips though, softly saying, "Yeah," before taking a drag of his own cigarette.

Even if it's been a long time, Yosuke still appreciates Yu's easy nature, smoking Yosuke's weird cigarettes like they were completely normal, where any of Yosuke's other 'friends' would complain and tease him about his girly smokes, and it would leave behind a hurt that wouldn't reflect in his answering smile. Yu isn't like that; isn't the type to make jokes that are designed to hurt, is in fact pretty bad with humor in general but always has a smile and sometimes even a laugh whenever it comes his way.

"It'll never really be the same, will it?"

It comes out as almost a whisper, and it echoes so many of his thoughts tonight that he's surprised to find that it is Yu's voice and not his own that actually voices it. Yosuke wonders if this is what he'd needed to think about, then decides it doesn't matter.

"No." It sounds a little tighter than he likes, but Yu just nods, turning serious eyes his way, his expression as unreadable as ever.

Yosuke's chest tightens, not quite like it did when they were sixteen, but enough that it reminds him of what he could never say, and for one brief moment, he thinks that maybe now is the time, now that he has nothing to lose but the ghost of the best friendship he's ever had, and he feels the words clamoring just in the back of his throat, fighting over what to say first, but in the end he swallows, dislodging them and sending them careening into oblivion, and then the moment is gone.

Somehow, that ghost of a friendship is still better than nothing at all.

Yosuke reaches for a safe topic, and Yu falls in step with him, talking about this person or that, people they used to know, people they've met in each other's absence, people Yosuke is sure will fade just as surely in another five or ten years' time, and in the back of his mind, he tells himself it's better this way. This way he will still have Yu when he forgets everyone he's telling Yu about now, and if he only sees him once a year, or once every five, they will fall into place, for a night, and it will be worth it to have stayed silent.

They both can't help but turn towards the TV through the front window when Yu's watch hits midnight, and then they laugh. Old habits and all.

Yu excuses himself shortly after, and Yosuke doesn't even allow himself to consider asking him to stay.

Instead, he lights another cigarette. He's tried to quit twice, but it never lasts. And if his eyes linger on the spot where Yu disappeared, well, it just means that smoking isn't the only thing that he failed to quit.

It's almost dawn when Yosuke goes inside, but there's no one waiting for him, so when he falls asleep with that familiar weight in his palm, there's no one there to think anything of it.


End file.
